http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
THE United States Supreme Court heard one of the most important
church-state cases of the last 10 years this past Wednesday. And
an early reading of the justices' questions during the oral
arguments over a "school choice" initiative suggest the court may
be disposed to grant a constitutional OK to the notion of parents
using government education vouchers to send their children to
private schools - including religious schools.

In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the court addressed the school
voucher program in Cleveland, Ohio. A government program there
gives poor kids in demonstrably lousy public schools a voucher, or
coupon, for $2,250. It which can be used at the public or private
school of their choice.

But most of the private-school choices available to the kids right
now are Catholic schools. So, per usual, the cry has gone up that
this violates "separation of church and state." But it's hard to
believe that's really the issue. After all, nobody is forcing children
out of public schools or into religious ones, and to be eligible for the
program religious schools may not use religious tests in determining
admission.

Instead, this is a desperate argument of a failing public school
bureaucracy terrified of losing its monopoly control. My own children
attend public school. A good one. But one of the reasons it's good
is that we live in an area with many outstanding private schools,
religious and secular, and with many parents who can afford a
"choice" as to where they send their children. For my public school
to keep its students (and its state funds) it had better perform, and
it does.

This isn't just an anecdotal anomaly. Harvard's Caroline Hoxby, who
focused on the long-running Milwaukee, Wisconsin, voucher system,
showed in a peer-reviewed study that vouchers improve the very
public schools where students are eligible for them, and the more
students eligible for the vouchers, the greater the improvement.

Nor is the issue money. Cleveland spends some $8,000 per year to
educate its students, a figure well above the Ohio average. Yet in
Cleveland's public schools, which like most large cities serve mostly
minority students, only one-third of its fourth graders are at grade
level in math, science and reading. This is consistent with a study
by the respected National Assessment of Educational Progress,
which reports that two-thirds of black and Hispanic fourth-graders
are functionally illiterate. (That's twice the rate for whites.) In effect
and perhaps most appalling, as the Wall Street Journal points out,
"with whites having exercised their own choice by moving out to
the suburbs. . .the Cleveland school system has essentially
re-segregated itself."

The debacle that is Cleveland's public school system led to its
voucher program in the first place, when in 1995 a federal court
pronounced the city's education system a disaster zone and forced
the state of Ohio to take it over.

Giving poor children vouchers became part of the rescue plan.

Only, no sooner had that happened than the education
bureaucracy pronounced itself outraged, outraged, that - gasp,
horror - many parents were choosing religious schools for their
children. (That is the main private option available until the
Supreme Court decides, in effect, whether the market for private
schools in Cleveland will be viable.) The New York Times - and don't
waste any time wondering if the children of that editorial board are
sent to inner-city public schools - breathlessly panted that if the
Supreme Court sides with Ohio, "it would mark a serious retreat
from this nation's historic commitment to maintaining a wall
between government and religion." But we're hardly talking
Armageddon here. For starters, the goal of the Cleveland voucher
system is educational excellence, not religious teaching. Further, it's
the parents that choose the school, not government, just as
soldiers under the GI bill following World War II could choose to
attend a religious college with their government "vouchers."

In any event, this case is not about maintaining a "wall of
separation of church and state" (a phrase that does not appear in
the Constitution). It's about improving education, particularly for
America's least served poor and minority communities, and allowing
religious schools to compete for a student's voucher in a
marketplace full of educational options. In fact, to exclude such
schools from that marketplace would be to discriminate against
religion, and that really would violate the First Amendment.

Thankfully, a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court seemed
to grasp that argument yesterday, even if - no surprise - those who
claim to passionately oppose vouchers on "church and state"
grounds didn't. Either way, the court's decision will be a landmark
one. It's expected to be handed down in
June.

JWR contributor Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by clicking here.